Powerless
by mamaesme
Summary: Post NM-Breakup - Edward has a year to deal with his super-hero complex, and then Bella would be home if Alice has anything to say about it.
1. Proluge

_Powerless_

**Summary**: Alice's just wanted her sister. NM-Breakup

**Disclaimer**: Stephenie Meyer owns the Twilight series. I just play with the characters.

**Notes**: I think Alice would have come back to fight Edward on breaking up with Bella, and this is how I think she would take it. I also had Bleeding Love blaring to get the ideas out.

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Throwing clothes into a bag, Alice didn't care about how they would look. She didn't care if they were wrinkled, ripped or destroyed. She didn't care about stupid things like clothes. She just didn't care

How could she when this nightmare was happening?

Her beloved brother was pulling the most idiotic stunt in his 100+ years of existence that would rip her family part. Tear them so far apart that the family's bonds could not be salvaged if he went through with this. He would destroy every attachment that they had to this fragile human and never ever would they be the same.

And she was going to go along with it.

Alice didn't know why. She could already see that it would tear Bella apart and destroy her soul until she trying to repair her broken heart with duck-tape. And that wouldn't work. She would have this hole gaping open in her chest until she died.

Alice couldn't see when or how that would be, but she couldn't help the foreboding feeling that it would be sooner than later. And she knew when Bella died; Edward would make his death official.

Collapsing to the floor, Alice shook, wishing she could cry. Jasper was gone, destroyed with what he had almost done to Bella. Edward was making the worst mistake of his life. Bella was about to fall apart, destroyed by the man she loved. Her family broken and quiet, trying to figure out what to do. And doing the wrong thing by following Edward's ideas after hours upon hours of endless fighting.

And Alice was powerless to stop it.

It was terrifying, knowing what she did, and that she couldn't do anything. Knowing that every second she would be watching them suffer, whether in person or through her sight. She couldn't control it, not matter what Edward thought. She would watch day in and day out as they mourned each other, wishing they had the other part of their soul near them. Knowing that Jasper would blame himself for eternity. Knowing that a small part of her would blame him too, and he would know that, damning himself further.

When did it all become so complicated, that two people who loved each other couldn't be together?

That they both had to be hurt, broken to pieces, to protect each other. One lies to the other for her protection.

All Alice wanted to do was hold Bella in her arms and hear her twinkling laugher as Emmett did something stupid, catch her before she fell, watch her blush so red that it looked like her body was on fire.

All Alice wanted was her best friend – her sister.

The almost-sister who she couldn't even say goodbye. The sister that would think Alice didn't even care about her. That thought Alice had only liked Bella because she was Edward's plaything and wanted Edward to be happy. The almost-sister who would be crushed by the loss of her second family.

Alice didn't care how much Edward would hate her; she didn't care about the consequences. All she cared about was having her family whole and living like they had become since Bella had entered their lives.

And she wasn't giving that up. Not because of her moronic brother who has a super-hero complex.

Carefully hiding her thoughts, Alice grimly smiled, firm in her decision as she stood up, and finished packing. She wouldn't stop watching Bella, she would hide it, but she wouldn't stop watching. She couldn't. Her gift didn't have an on and off switch; it was just there.

Edward had a year to deal with this ridiculous idea that by leaving her and breaking her, Bella would be safe. Alice would make sure that she was safe. Any sign of the contrary, she would be at Bella's side in an instant.

Edward had a year, and then Alice would come back to Forks. Bella wouldn't get over Edward, Alice knew that much. And in a year, Bella would have a choice.

And in little over a year, two vampires would return to the current Cullen family residence. It would be probably in Vermont, and the family would be going by another name, but they would be together again.

Edward had a year.

And Bella would be home – forever.

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Read and Review Please!


	2. Chapter 1

_Powerless_

**Summary**: Post NM-Breakup Edward has a year to deal with his super-hero complex, and then Bella would be home if Alice has anything to say about it.

**Disclaimer**: Stephenie Meyer owns the Twilight series. I just play with the characters.

**Notes**: I love this story already, so I've expanded it beyond a one-shot. Yay! Alice will be out of character for the chapter, simply because I can't see her being happy in a situation like this. Alice has more emotions beyond bubbly and this is an exploration of her character through a difficult period of time. Also, the title is staying because Alice is powerless to stop everything, but she isn't powerless about what is to come. Irony rules.

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"Won't keep my mouth shut anymore  
I've had my share of closing doors  
Now I know I'm not afraid"

_Mouth Shut_, The Veronica

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**Chapter One:**_ Ripple Effect_

Alice watched as Edward walked alongside Bella, screaming for someone to keep it from happening. Trying to warn Bella of what was coming and to make Edward change his mind. Trying, desperately, to stop the inevitable from happening.

Still, Edward told Bella, in the deadest tone she had ever heard that he didn't love her. She could see the dots connecting behind Bella's eyes, could practically read her mind and what Bella was concluding. She could see Bella fall to pieces before her.

When Edward left, Alice focused on Bella and watched the fragile, broken human mouth the words again and again practically comatose. Bella shivered cold and frozen to the core, in shock and heart dying. And Alice broke with her too.

Until her vision suddenly went blank and she woke up screaming, bringing everyone into her and Jasper's room, where he was trying to comfort her, without affect. She looked up at Carlisle with a dead look in her eyes.

"He's done it. He broke her."

Esme let a sob tear through her throat at the idea that her favorite, Edward had done the worst thing in the world and broken up with the love of his life - the agony that he had to be going through. And her newly found, practically daughter, was broken. Where with no one who could understand the situation or what was occurring. No mother to hold her and comfort her. No one to vent to.

No one.

Carlisle's face was drawn into a tight expression knowing that his firstborn was not taking his opinions – making the mistakes that all younger generations must stumble though to learn about life and themselves. One that he thought Edward might try to fix far too late. One that might destroy a little girl that he considered to become his next daughter.

It was as if someone had punched Emmett in the gut. His face was twisted in a grimace, realizing that this might not all clear up as soon as he thought. That he might not get to see him "little sister" again. Not alive that is. His face turned thunderous at the thought that Bella had been hurt by Edward, and Alice felt relief that he was angry as well.

Jasper looked sick to his stomach. Arms outstretched to hold her, but unwilling to do it because of the agony that she, his wife, was in because of him. Knowing that Bella and Edward were torn apart because he couldn't control himself. He looked like he was about to run any moment.

"Well, that's twisted relationship is over," Rosalie grinned, happy that finally her family could be together the way they had been before.

Alice lunged at her, intent on taking Rosalie down a few hundred notches and tearing her pretty face up a bit. Jasper and Carlisle grabbed her, and with a large amount of effort held her back. Snarling, she tried to reach forward for Rosalie again before she screamed at her.

"You little twit! You think this family will be fine and perfect again. BULL! Edward is broken beyond belief, Jasper blames himself, Esme and Carlisle lost their newest daughter, Emmett lost his little sister, and I lost my best friend and sister. But you, all you think is about yourself. LOOK AROUND AT US AND SEE CLEARLY FOR ONCE!"

Rosalie looked shaken, but not convinced. "She'll be fine. Bella will find some other boy and move on."

"That is a lie and if you think she will, you never knew her. Grow up and stop caring just about yourself and for the rest of us for once. Selfish twit," Alice ripped herself from Jasper and Carlisle's iron grips and went to the door.

"Don't come after me, I'm going hunting. Alone."

And she disappeared into the night, trying to calm down and not run all the way to Forks to just see Bella.

364 more days.

When Alice entered the house again (four days later), Edward was home. It was tense in the house, but the level of stress went up about twenty levels when everyone saw her. They all had a clear memory of her uncharacteristic blow up at Rosalie and were clearly projecting to Edward.

She walked up the stairs lightly, deliberately not thinking anything at all. Keeping her mind as blank as a slate. She entered his room, not knocking. He didn't deserve that. He was sitting on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, looking morose and withdrawn.

"Grow up," she spat out.

He slowly turned his head to stare her in the eyes. "Are you going to tell me to stop being selfish like you did with Rosalie?"

His eyes held no emotion. Dead. Just like he and she and the rest of their family was. Just like how his heart would have felt if it could still beat. He had broken himself when he had told Bella that he had never loved, or at least did no longer. And how she had accepted it so easily that it seemed like the inevitable in her mind.

Dead like how Bella was acting at the moment.

That made her vision go red with anger and hurt. Anger that he was stupid enough to believe that none of this was hurting Bella. That she was fine and dandy in Forks, living some dream life that he had planned out for her since the beginning. A human life that didn't include him.

Or the rest of the family.

A life that Alice knew she and Bella objected to. It seemed to Alice that Edward had brought Bella into their life, allowed everyone (except stupid, selfish Rosalie) to become attached, to love her and care for her so deeply that they were planning the next hundreds of years with her only to snatch her away and shatter all their ideas, emotions and selves. Everyone had become attached to Bella in different ways, not knowing that their relationships would be tragically cut short.

Alice wouldn't allow that.

She would not be powerless in all of this.

She was not a pawn.

She was a Queen, who made her own destiny.

And it was time that Edward was reminded of that fact.

"No," Alice said admitted, allowing a thrill of satisfaction run through her when his eyes briefly lit up with surprise. "I'm going to let you wallow in this guilt, hurt, and agony that you are in. You deserve it."

He was watching her now, warily.

She began to pace around the room and spoke in a lighthearted air. "It's only your fault that we had to leave Forks, a home that we all felt comfortable in for the first time in the last twenty years. It's your fault that we are morning Bella like she is dead."

His eyes lit up and he opened his mouth to argue her choice of words, but she did it knowing that it would anger her and keep him out of her mind, to keep her plans hidden for as long as she needed them.

"And she might as well be, I can't see her, since you forbid me," she bit out the last two words, throwing them at him like venom at her brother. "Victoria could have gotten her by now. Why should we care? She was your little plaything. I'm surprised you even stayed with her as long as you did."

Edward has her against the wall before she knew it. No one rushed up the stairs and burst through the door, as she knew would happen. This needed to play out. Someone had to warn Edward just how bad the family leaving Bella alone and defenseless was. How dangerous it was for her, a human girl, to be left alone like a sitting duck for any vampire.

It also didn't hurt that she was playing in Bella's insecurities, telling him just how badly he had screwed up her. He had to know and understand just what he had done when he left. Consequences that he hadn't thought through until now, only because she was throwing them in his face.

Comprehension flew onto his face as he processed the fact about Victoria, she could already see him planning to leave and track her and kill her. Alice scoffed at that. He couldn't do that, he was no good at tracking, he needed help. But of course, he was in stubborn Edward mode and accept none.

Then, he processed her comment about Bella becoming a toy and his hand began to crush her airway. Luckily, she didn't need to breathe and it didn't matter to her, she knew what he would do before he knew what she would do. She had spent the last four days working on keeping her mind blank and had mastered the concept.

Alice grabbed his arm, twisted it, breaking the bone. He gasped at the pain and she switched them around, her arms holding his in place at his sides. During the exchange, she never looked away from him, making him understand that she was serious about this. That she was willing to take him on and destroy him if he tried to fight her.

"That is what all of this seems to her Edward," she muttered, knowing he could hear her. He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off and continued. "I didn't try and watch, but it just came on. I watched her and you. I saw you break her into a million shattered pieces. I watched helplessly as she fell into a comatose state mouthing 'Why can't he love me?' I watched it, and all I wanted to do was run to Forks and hold her. But I can't because of you."

She searched his eyes, trying to see if he was about to stop all of this insanity. If he would run back to Forks and save Bella from herself. Edward was warring with himself, and Alice thought the side that would go back was winning until they light died suddenly, making her want to bash his head in a wall.

"She's safer without us. Without me."

Alice gave up. If Edward wouldn't save Bella, she would. Soon.

"I don't think you did the right thing Edward. Not by her and certainly not by us. You didn't allow goodbyes, real honest to goodness goodbyes. Not what you are calling a goodbye nowadays. It's a wound that won't heal. Ever. If you had told her we had to leave to protect her, she would be heartbroken but okay. You acted as though you always lied to her, and believe me, that will destroy her if it hasn't already. It's destroyed me for sure. When you go back, and I know you will, she will be different. Just understand that now," Alice sighed, tattered and worn around the edges, a shell of her normal bubbly self.

She let him go, and he slid down the wall to the floor. She watched him for a minute before sighing. He was just as broken as Bella was, and it was so scary about how similar the two were. They couldn't love without the other, and someone needed to make that clear.

She sure couldn't.

As she was walking out, he choked out, "I know she will be different. She'll have a human life. With someone like Mike."

Spinning around, Alice let out a bark of laughter. "That's if she can ever forget you. She is your soul mate, Edward, no matter how you will deny that it is true. Star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet."

That struck some mark unknown to him as his eyes darkened.

Alice ran a hand through her short hair. "She can't live without you, and clearly you can't live without her. She will love no other. I'm willing to bet on that."

"Romeo and Juliet didn't turn out well," he quibbled, staring at some point on the wall. Alice knew he was really just remembering some moment with Bella. The class had been studying Romeo and Juliet before the whole disaster, so there might have been some comparison made a while back.

"Only because Romeo was an idiot," Alice assured him before walking out the door.

She made it to her room, where Jasper was waiting. Hesitantly, he placed an arm on her shoulder, wondering and worried that Alice was angry with him as well. She hugged him fiercely to her before kissing him on the lips with a passion that hadn't been there in days.

After a few moments, they broke apart and placed their foreheads together. "I love you Jasper," Alice breathed.

"Are you sure," he questioned.

"Of course," she affirmed. "This will all be cleared up in less than a year."

His eyes stared at her, accusingly. "You said you wouldn't look."

"I'm not," Alice replied, blithely. "It'll be fixed in a years time, by Edward's hand or by mine."

360 more days.

-TBC

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**Preview**:

_When Edward decided to leave the house two weeks later, Alice was actually relieved. His constant vacant expression and "poor me" attitude was starting to get on her nerves. More than they had before she blew up at him._

Really.

Alice didn't hate her brother; she loved him to death. He understood her and her powers in a way that not even Jasper could. Edward knew that she couldn't control her sight like he couldn't control his hearing. Jasper could turn his feeling on and off for the most part, and it was controllable, unlike hers.

The two were close, like twins. And that's why Alice was so angry. She knew it was tearing Edward apart, and he was being so stubborn and wouldn't take her advice. Her advice! Like she didn't know what see was talking about, with her sight and all.

Stupid, stubborn Edward.

_Alice leaned against the window staring out at the night with a quiet sigh. Bella was getting worse though. She wouldn't act on impulse, laugh or even smile. She was existing, not living. And it was terrifying._

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That was the beginning of the next chapter that will come out within the week.

Please Review and tell me if you want to keep this within canon or AU! Input is loved and adored.


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